In my previous U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,876,079; 3,931,893; 4,058,221 and Des. No. 238,228, there is disclosed a gun mount for attachment to the rear window of a vehicle. The gun mount includes spaced, similar, rack members, each having a main body which is made into a plurality of coacting parts that terminate in an attachment blade at opposed ends thereof. The two coacting parts are arranged respective to one another so that the attachment blades thereof oppose one another and can be extended respective to one another to thereby provide for a suitable range of adjustment therebetween. However, the range of adjustment is relatively small, and it is often inconvenient to place more than two cradles on each of the main body members of the racks.
This made it desirable to have made a available a gun rack which can be used for the rear window of a vehicle, such as a pickup truck, for example, as well as being used as a decorative rack mounted directly to any wall surface, for example, the wall surface of a home or hunting lodge. It was also found desirable to have made available a gun rack having a main body which is supported at each end thereof by attachment means wherein the attachment means can be moved respective to one another to provide a relatively great range of adjustment therebetween. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,648,516 and 4,776,471 therefore made available a gun rack which accommodates more than two gun supporting cradles in the event the space considerations admit the length between the attachment means to be extended sufficiently to accommodate the extra cradles. Reference is also made to the art cited in the above patents, as well as the art cited in those patents, as well as the entire field of search mentioned in all of that multitude of patents.
All of these gun racks have worked exceptionally well in any number of different vehicles except for the window frame such as found in the General Motors 1988 Chevrolet pickup truck which has a rear window set in a frame made with hardly any gasket at all. Considerable difficulty is experienced in using some of the prior art gun racks, such as mentioned in the above patents, in this new vehicle window frame. One major drawback is the lack of structural rigidity the prior art gun racks provide for resisting loads applied perpendicularly to the racks, which easily bow the rack away from the window glass whenever it is subjected to side loads. This lateral load allows the rack to significantly shorten its effective length and become loosened in the window frame whereas the old window frames with the large resilient gasket could easily accommodate such a change as may be introduced into the configuration of the rack. The loosened gun rack is undesirable because the guns supported therein could fall and inadvertently discharge upon striking the vehicle floor.
The present invention overcomes this dangerous and undesirable drawback by the provision of a second main body member arranged as a spreader bar to resist lateral loads and therefore resist bowing so that the attachment blades remain secured to the opposed upper and lower runs of the window frame and according, the absence of a large prior art window gasket does not unduly interfere with the mounting of the improved gun rack apparatus. Further, the spreader bar is placed inwardly from the first body member so that the cradles can be formed on the first member which brings about unexpected results and provides a new and unusual gun rack apparatus that overcomes the above drawbacks and provides several advantages over the prior art devices.